34 comments:

My second favorite use of mistletoe was on a college teacher who was a bit randy and had a sprig pinned to her sweatshirt over each breast. She was beautifully buxom, and I don't know if anyone ever dared to try and plant a kiss underneath those sprigs.

I'm certain I'm not the only one who remembers that part of the class party clearly 35 years later.

According to the court, apparently the rich man and the priest who walked by the injured man and did nothing, were wise, while the Samaritan was a fool, who if it had happened in California in the 21st century would have opened himself up to a lawsuit by the injured man who could have taken everything he owned.

I've always thought that distinction between being trained to provide assistance and a normal "bystander" (who is anything but when they help) was backwards. If a trained person injures you that is more of an issue in my mind than someone who is not trained who inadvertantly 'harms' the person.

One question I hope the defense looks at in what the outcome for the "victim" plaintiff might have been given whatever the accident was. Did the plaintiff yell "Help me!" or was she unconscious? Was she wearing a seatbelt?

How many on the jury will think "There but for the grace of God (apologies to Christopher Hitchens) go I."

Was it here that there was a discussion of why so few people are heroes these days?

Some years ago I was coming back late at night from working in St. Johns, a town in the mountains in eastern Arizona, down a lonely two lane road to another small town, Holbrook (that road is so lonely late at night that some nights you can drive for an hour on it and never see a car coming the other way.) This was on a cold night in February, and the cold wind was blowing. I saw a truck broken down on the side of the road. A woman was in it, and when I stopped and talked to her she said that she felt safe enough in the truck but asked if I could pick up her husband (who had started walking home so he could get their other car). She said if I kept on going, I'd see him walking a mile or two down the road. I did, and I gave him a ride. Twelve miles, I gave him a ride. It was frankly cold enough out there that he might have frozen before he got home (at the very least walking twelve miles on that night would be a good way to get pneumonia.) Plus, his wife would sooner or later have frozen in the truck if he didn't make it. There are no police out there because there is no traffic out there at that time of the night, and I didn't have a cell with me (even if I did, I doubt if it would have been in range of any kind of coverage out there.) Now, was I rendering 'medical assistance' (as the California court says I should be)? Absolutely not. So according to the court, I was a fool to let him in the car because if anything had happened (suppose he claimed that he wrenched his shoulder putting on the seatbelt?) then I could be sued.

The states that have a Good Samaritan Statue at least give volunters a defense. But Common Law has never put duty on the bystander to volunter, but treats the volunteers taking action as creating that actor's duty to help in a non-negligent way if they help at all on the theory that by assuming the role of the helper one effectively excludes any other helpers at hand. That IS the basis of the law of negligent torts. I assure you before Good Samaritan Statutes all MD's were trained never to stop and assist.